The crew have been in the room since the loading door opened. The screen is up and the lighting is programmed. Then a technician finds you, shows you which laptop is the live one, and asks whether you are happy. That is the handover. On a crewed audio visual (AV) build it is the weakest point in the whole job, in our experience. An AV handover checklist matters because the room you are handed is rarely quite the room that was drawn, and because on a dry hire, where you take the equipment and run it yourself, the handover is most of the service.
In short
- Responsibility for using the equipment safely rests in law with the user, so the handover is where a set of duties becomes yours.
- The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 already set out what the information handed over has to cover, including what to do when something misbehaves.
- Anyone on your side who will use the equipment has to be trained for it, and so does whoever supervises them. That duty sits with their employer.
- The Health and Safety Executive’s own guidance on shift handover says it should be face to face, two-way, and both spoken and written down.
What an AV handover checklist has to cover
Regulation 8 of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 requires every employer to ensure that all persons who use work equipment have available to them adequate health and safety information and, where appropriate, written instructions about using it.
It then says what that has to include: the conditions in which and the methods by which the equipment may be used, foreseeable abnormal situations and the action to be taken if one occurs, and any conclusions to be drawn from experience in using it. The information also has to be readily comprehensible to the people concerned.
That last item is the one a handover usually skips. It is not the manual. It is what the crew learned during the build and have not written down.
The handover is where responsibility moves
Hiring equipment out counts as supplying it. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is direct about what follows: firms hiring equipment out are suppliers under section 6 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Section 6 itself requires a supplier to take such steps as are necessary to secure that the people supplied with an article are given adequate information about the use for which it is designed.
The other half is less comfortable. The HSE also says that the responsibility in law rests upon the user, and that a company hiring equipment out cannot normally be responsible for the day-to-day and pre-use safety checks, which fall to the user instead. If nobody on your side is standing there when the handover happens, it happens anyway.
Somebody on your side is about to use work equipment
Regulation 9 of the same Regulations requires every employer to ensure that everyone who uses work equipment has received adequate training for health and safety purposes, including the methods that may be adopted, the risks the use may entail and the precautions to be taken. The following paragraph puts the same duty on anyone who supervises or manages that use.
That second half is the one events get wrong. The person who takes the demonstration is often the person who booked the job, not the person who touches anything later. The HSE adds that training may need refreshing at suitable intervals, and that new equipment can require additional training. If the equipment in a room you have run before has changed, the training may need doing again.
The regulator has already written down why handovers fail
This is not a problem our sector invented. The HSE publishes guidance on shift handover. Its account of an effective handover has three parts: a period of preparation by the outgoing people, the handover itself, where outgoing and incoming people communicate to exchange task-relevant information, and cross-checking of that information by the incoming people as they assume responsibility.
It sets conditions as well. A handover should be conducted face to face, be two-way with both participants taking joint responsibility, use both verbal and written communication, be based on an analysis of the information needs of the incoming people, and be given as much time and resource as necessary. The HSE notes that many accidents have happened because communication failed at shift handover, and cites Piper Alpha as one.
What should still be in the room after the van has gone
One of our published testimonials, from Louis Kirby, describes the handover from the other side of the table. The technical team who set up and later de-rigged the equipment, meaning took it down and cleared the site, were knowledgeable and helpful, and James stayed on site to check everything worked and demonstrated the equipment before leaving.
What gets left behind is easier to ask for.
- Written operating notes for anything your team will touch, in language they can follow rather than a manual.
- The user instructions themselves, which the HSE says a supplier should provide in English.
- A patch list, meaning a record of what is connected to what, so a fault can be traced by somebody who did not build the room.
- Labelling on anything a person is expected to switch, and on anything they must not.
- The inspection and test record for any temporary electrical installation, and examination paperwork for anything suspended.
- Whatever spare equipment has been left, and which item it stands in for.
Who you can still reach when the room is yours
The last item on a handover is a name and a number, and it is the one that too often ends up as “call the office”. Settle who is reachable and what they can actually do from where they are.
This is one of the reasons we argue for one supplier rather than three. Split audio, lighting and staging across separate companies and you do not get one handover, you get three, at different times, with nobody holding the room as a whole. When something stops working mid-session, the first job becomes working out whose equipment it is.
None of this needs inventing on the night. The handover belongs in the brief, alongside everything else your supplier needs from you, and the mechanics of what to do when a supplier cannot get back to you are better understood before you need them.
Frequently asked questions
Do we still need a handover if we have booked a crew for the whole event?
Yes, though it is a shorter one. If your supplier’s technicians stay in the room for the whole event, they are the ones using the equipment, and you are not being handed it at all. What you still need is the part that outlasts them: who is on shift, who covers a break, and what happens if the room has to run without them for a while.
Who should take the handover on our side?
The person who will be in the room when something stops working, rather than the person who signed the order. Regulation 9 requires an employer to make sure both groups are trained: anyone who uses work equipment, and anyone who supervises or manages that use. So both of those people have a reason to be standing there. If they cannot be, ask for the demonstration to be repeated for whoever replaces them.
Sources
- legislation.gov.uk · Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998, regulation 8
- legislation.gov.uk · Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998, regulation 9
- legislation.gov.uk · Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, section 6
- Health and Safety Executive · Equipment and machinery frequently asked questions
- Health and Safety Executive · Training and competence
- Health and Safety Executive · Shift handover
If you have an event where your own team will be left running the room, we are happy to talk through what the handover should include and who needs to be standing there for it. We supply audio, lighting, rigging and staging from one source and deliver nationwide from Manchester. You can reach us through the contact page or by email at hire@eventproductiongroup.co.uk, and if your event genuinely does not need any of this, we will tell you that instead.
